


gasoline

by hiddenqueen (amazonqueen)



Series: welcome to the badlands [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Domestic, Exhaustion, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Implied Relationships, Internal Monologue, LLF Comment Project, Poverty, Public Transportation, Subways, and i wrote it, but only kind of, idek what this is, implied prostitution, implied self-esteem issues, kind of, mostly anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 22:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazonqueen/pseuds/hiddenqueen
Summary: sakura's low on self-esteem; and pretty much everything else, too. what else is new?





	gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> this is a separate au from the previous two in this series.

The sky is purpling like the bruise on Sakura’s knee, the bruises on her upper arm, the bruise on her other knee. Sakura gets hurt a lot. It’s not her fault. She’s just clumsy and easy to rag on because she looks small and fragile and easy to break, easy to crumple.

The subway continues along its meandering way as Sakura leans her head against the window, green eyes almost pressed right up against the dirty glass. Not that she can really make out much; the landscape outside is a Van Gogh painting, painted in thick strokes with chunks that jump out at her. Fleeting purple and blue and gray.

It’s not nice weather outside.

Sakura drops her head from the window and looks down at her gloved hands, sighing. Her hands might as well not be gloved at all, for all the good the thin, hole-ridden things are doing her. It’s the middle of winter and she’s coming back from a graveyard shift at her third part-time job of the day and Sakura is still dirt-poor and she hates it, but what can you do?

Nothing.

Nothing, just like there was nothing for her in the run-down apartment she shared with Ino, who also worked multiple jobs, all of which varied in their legality. Ino is blonde and pretty and knows how to use what she’s got; and they need to. But Sakura doesn’t worry her pretty little head about that. Ino is a big girl. She can do what she wants, and as long as they have a place to live and each other, she can be happy.

There are very few people on the subway at this time of night. Addicts of various kinds, college students who had lost track of time in the library – people like her, broke and rundown and coming back from the last job of the day, too exhausted to speak.

The subway abruptly lurches to a stop and Sakura looks up, startled, before realizing that they are simply at a station and that nothing particularly horrific has happened, like an armed robbery or a sudden engine malfunction. Just a stop.

A few of the people around her get up and shuffle off. Sakura can still feel the grease on her hair, coating her in a thin layer of fat even though she had been covered from head to toe while working. Something like disgust roils in her gut, or would have, but she is too tired to muster up even that.

Exhaustion. It does wonders. You don’t have to think about anything; can’t, actually. All Sakura can do is slump here in her seat until it’s her stop and hope that she’ll have somehow magically regained enough energy to not make a fatal mistake, like wander into oncoming traffic.

Not that she thinks she’s stupid or unaware enough to do that, but again, exhaustion did things to a person.

She would know. Some days, Sakura felt like she had been born tired.

Why Ino stuck with her, though; that she would never know.

 _Ino._ She had met the other girl back in elementary school, when life had been decent and not-so-strained, when she hadn’t had to think about things like money and groceries; or not as much, anyway. Ino had befriended her and the rest was history; save for one memorable breakup of sorts over a boy. They’d been inseparable ever since.

The subway lurches to a stop again, and Sakura, this time prepared, grabs her bag and stands, following a guy her age (blond, tall, wearing an orange jacket that made her tired eyes hurt) off the subway and onto the platform. Sakura knows the route home well and doesn’t have to think about it before taking the stairs and emerging onto the street, where it’s only a short walk back to the apartment and Ino, assuming Ino is there at the moment.

It would be a short walk, anyways, but Sakura’s legs weren’t long to begin with and she’s tired – has she said that already? Anyways, it takes twice the time it usually does before she’s fumbling with her keys and half-leaning against the doorframe, eyes drooping.

Lucky her, she doesn’t have to worry about her keys and things like unlocking the door, because there are soft footsteps behind her (Sakura can hear the tap-tap of heels on floor) and then Ino is being more competent than she is, as always, and taking care of it for her, like always, and their apartment door opens for her.

Like magic. Like Ino, who was magic, in her opinion.

“Thanks, Ino,” she says, quiet, and goes inside, toeing off her shoes by the door and arranging them neatly. Ino’s heels do not go beside her humble sneakers. Ino’s heels are slid off and then held in her hand, because Ino’s heels are work shoes and kept in the closet. Ino’s normal shoes are beside the sneakers already; Ino’s stripper heels, as the other girl calls them, are just for the nighttime.

“Tired?” Ino asks, moving past Sakura into the bedroom. There is only one bedroom. Sakura doesn’t mind, doesn’t think Ino does either; they’ve shared things much worse than a bed, or a room, or a wardrobe. It fits the two of them, and if they end up twined together in the middle of the night, that’s that.

“Mmhm,” Sakura hums in response, and pads after Ino into the bedroom. Her movements are slow and lethargic, laden with the exhaustion that has dogged her for so long. Still, “How was work?”

(Sakura could never put herself above Ino without feeling guilty. How hard is it to ask about Ino’s day? Not hard at all. Her friend deserves that much.)

“Fine,” Ino says, squatting by their wardrobe as she slides her heels under their rack of clothes. “You?”

Sakura hums again.

Ino turns, frowns at her, but doesn’t inquire. Sakura isn’t sure how she feels about that; it’s too late in the night and they’re both too tired to pursue any lines of questioning, which is usually how it goes with them.

Work was work. Sakura asked about Ino, because Ino’s job was actually risky. Ino didn’t need to ask about her.

They move about each other in silence like that, for a while (ships passing in the night), stripping down from work clothes and into pajamas, half a minute showers one after the other because hot water needs to be conserved, combing out hair and brushing teeth and splashing water on faces.

It is all routine.

And just as the sad clock on their nightstand blinks a red 2 AM at her, they are sliding into bed.

Sakura’s toes are cold (as well as the rest of her body, honestly, but mostly the toes) and she turns onto her side so she is facing Ino, whose blonde hair fans out around her and makes her look like an angel no matter what she does.

Ino’s eyes are closed, blonde, barely visible eyelashes sweeping onto the bone under her eye, and Sakura thinks, with all the slow inevitability of something that you have known forever, that Ino is beautiful, maybe even at her most beautiful, like this; lovely and asleep and peaceful.

“Go to sleep,” Ino murmurs, a dainty hand reaching out to sweep Sakura’s eyelids closed. It fumbles, but eventually achieves its goal.

“I am,” Sakura whispers back, a faint hint of teasing banter in there but mostly just tired obedience, and curls into Ino as they drift off into sleep in the early hours of the morning.

When she wakes up the next morning tucked into her friend’s side, neither Sakura nor Ino is surprised.

Neither of them blame it on the bad heating, either, though they could have.

Sakura doesn’t know what that means.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a departure from the previous works in this series, as usual, but i kind of like it? idk, it's got a v melancholy feel to it and i like that. i considered tagging this with the queerplatonic relationship tag, for ino/sakura, but i decided not to because it's never explicitly stated or anything more than v lightly implied and i feel like it wouldn't be right to tag it that way. but if you want to read them as being in a qpr, then by all means go ahead. 
> 
> anyways, i hope you all liked it too! kudos and/or comments are much appreciated <3
> 
> find me on tumblr at [@colourofinfinity!](http://colourofinfinity.tumblr.com/)
> 
> This story is part of **[the LLF comment project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject),** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. 
> 
> This author invites:
> 
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